TORONTO – Two Toronto-area doctors have been accused of slipping a noxious substance into a 23-year-old woman’s drink and sexually assaulting her at a hotel in the city’s downtown entertainment district, police said Friday.
The woman had met one of the men before, and they’d had a conversation that appears to have been strictly professional, said Toronto police Const. Tony Vella. She wanted career advice, and he suggested they meet Sunday at a hotel near Queen Street West and University Avenue to further discuss her professional future, Vella said.
The meeting took place and soon another man, the co-accused, joined the pair, Vella said.
As the evening went on, the two doctors took the woman to another bar.
It was there, police said, that one or both of the men are accused of slipping an "unknown substance" into her drink.
"She felt nauseous. There was obviously a medical issue," Vella said, adding police are still trying to determine exactly what the substance was.
Then, they took her back to the hotel and sexually assaulted her, police said.
Amitabh Chauhan of Ancaster, and Suganthan Kayilasanathan of Markham, are both charged with administering a noxious thing and committing gang sexual assault.
Both men are 32 and registered with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. There are no disciplinary complaints or restrictions listed on their files.
According to the college directory, Chauhan works in the department of plastic surgery at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont. The Hamilton Health Sciences Centre, the health network that includes McMaster’s medical services, could not find any information about Chauhan Friday.
Kayilasanathan has been working as a family physician at the Clinicare Medical Centre in Toronto for the past four or five months, said a doctor at the walk-in clinic in Toronto’s east end.
"He was supposed to come in for work today (Friday), but he called and said it was an emergency and he had to help his friend," said the doctor, who asked not to be named.
The two men were scheduled to appear in court Saturday morning, after their arrest on Friday.
In 2007, the Ontario government changed laws to curb the use of date-rape drugs by creating bar licences that would allow women to take drinks with them into the washroom.
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